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Parents convince Baltimore teen to turn himself in — then he gets $500,000 bail

Demonstrators destroy the windshield of a Baltimore Police car as they protest the death Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died of spinal cord injuries in police custody, in Baltimore, Maryland, April 25, 2015.

The parents of a teenage rioter seen in an iconic photograph say the Baltimore court system is making an example out of their son — and it's not fair.

Allen Bullock, 18, was seen in photographs using a traffic cone to smash in the window of a police car this week. The images came to define the Baltimore riots. Now, he's facing a $500,000 bail and — if convicted of a range of charges — years in jail.

Demonstrators destroy the windshield of a Baltimore Police car as they protest the death Freddie Gray, an African American man who died of spinal cord injuries in police custody, in Baltimore, Maryland, April 25, 2015.

Image: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

"It is just so much money," his mother, Bobbi Smallwood, told The Guardian of the half a million dollars bail. “Who could afford to pay that?”

Bullock's stepfather, Maurice Hawkins, told the newspaper he convinced the rioter to turn himself in to the police after seeing his son's image broadcast throughout Baltimore media. It ran on the front page of The Baltimore Sun.

More than 200 arrested

"By turning himself in he also let me know he was growing as a man and he recognized what he did was wrong," Hawkins said on Wednesday at his home in a low-income neighborhood in south Baltimore. "But they are making an example of him and it is not right."

Baltimore police have arrested 235 people since Monday night, according to city officials. Maryland law requires arrestees to receive a court hearing within 24 hours of their arrest, but the majority of those 235 did not receive one in that time frame.

On Thursday morning, nearly 200 people were freed after a local criminal defense attorney filed a Habeas Corpus petition. But dozens of others still remain in the city's jails.

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